Changing underlayers

Changing underlayer is The risk of building your business on a third-party platform and cites how Amazon, eBay and FaceBook have changed their terms-of-service for markets and services which others have already built atop. Critics of Adobe Flash sometimes say "But it's proprietary!" and worry that Adobe may change the platform out from under them. To some degree I think this is a valid risk to include in your cost/benefit calculations... the upcoming Player security update does change some of the groundrules. But I think Tim's article may benefit from finer definition of the term "platform"... the phrase "risks of third-party services" distinguishes his examples from third-party technology. Adobe can only change distributed runtime capabilities with the audience's consent -- there are million of decentralized decisions each day about whether to install or not. If California fell into the sea tomorrow then Flash Player would continue on, same as before. A third-party data service can implement changes unilaterally, and only needs to convince itself that it will achieve a better business model as a result. I agree with Tim that reliance on a third-party data or marketing service leaves you vulnerable to any changes they might experience -- it's a valid issue to consider -- but the term "platform" can benefit from distinguishing between ongoing services and already-provided capabilities